Robinson, ‘Pragmatic reconciliation and pragmatic avoidance’, 2021
- Category: Literature
- Source: Academic
- Subject: Sexual Orientation/Sexuality, Refugee/Asylum, Age
- Place: United Kingdom
- Year: 2021
- File: ejiltalk.org-Pragmatic reconciliation and pragmatic avoidance The UK Supreme Court faces the norm conflict on abdu
- URL: https://www.ejiltalk.org/pragmatic-reconciliation-and-pragmatic-avoidance-the-uk-supreme-court-faces-the-norm-conflict-on-abducted-refugee-children-in-g-v-g
Ed Robinson, ‘Pragmatic reconciliation and pragmatic avoidance: The UK Supreme Court faces the norm conflict on abducted (refugee?) children in G v G‘, EJIL: Talk!, 25 March 2021
Abstract
The topic of this post is a Supreme Court ruling from Friday 19 March, ‘G v G’, and specifically its approach to the potentially conflicting treaties respectively governing (a) the protection of refugees and (b) the return of abducted children to their previous state of residence. The Court demonstrated a commendable refusal to inflict undue violence on either of the regimes at issue; there was no (to borrow from Milanovic) ‘creative’ or ‘forced’ avoidance or ‘reading down’ of their requirements. There were instead extensive efforts to find practical measures to meet the requirements of both; however in the most intractable areas the Court effectively delegated the ‘dirty’ work of reconciling the potentially irreconcilable to other actors in the UK’s domestic law system.
This post summarises those aspects of the judgment, examining the case from the international law perspective. Citations to the ruling of the Supreme Court (or ‘the Court’) are included in square brackets below.
For decision, see here.